


Time and Motion

by Canaan



Series: Amelia!verse [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Romance, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:29:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In a week or two, he'd have forgotten the quick grope in the alley, but he knew he'd remember the conversation with the kid for a long time." Set in the middle of the 20th century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not your typical fanfic. The original character kind of grabbed me and ran away with me. I'm always leery of fanfics that hinge on an original character, because the results are so widely varied. I guess I'm hoping that you've read some of my other stories and liked them well enough to take a chance. If you'll go out on a limb with me, I think I can promise it will pan out. BR'd by Aibhinn, who always makes my writing better.
> 
> Bitty little spoiler for Something Borrowed. Song lyrics throughout are the full text of "Time and Motion," by Rush.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Jack Harkness, Torchwood, Doctor Who, or the BBC. Weirdly, this time, everybody else is mine.

Jack let the other man swing him up against the wall. The alley smelled of piss and puke and other things he'd rather not think about, but the mouth that claimed his was warm and the hands on his shoulders felt good. He shoved his hands in the other man's pockets, yanking a pelvis forward into his own so their erections rubbed together through their trousers. It got him a gasp and a murmur, and those hands ran down the front of his trousers to unbutton and unzip.

It seemed to him he'd heard the man's name, once, at the beginning of the night. He couldn't think of it now as he returned the favor, and it didn't particularly matter. This wasn't even important enough to find a room--a bit of tricky business in 1947, anyway. Just a quick grapple in the alley behind the pub with a pretty stranger so uncomfortable with himself he'd probably shy away from anything more than the hand Jack put down the front of his pants. He wrapped his fingers around the other man's cock and stroked as a less expert, but heartfelt, grip enclosed his own.

Moans and panting and not enough minutes later, the younger man came, silently. Jack thrust into the other man's hand, a strangled cry marking his release. He smothered it in a mouth that was already pulling away from his.

He let the poor, shy kid button his own trousers and go. Maybe it'd be a good enough experience he'd take more time with the next man he had. Jack shrugged and wiped his hand on his pants before buttoning his trousers. He zipped them up and looked at the wall behind him, wondering what he'd just leaned in.

As he turned around, a pair of dark eyes caught his own. A dark-haired little girl, maybe ten years old, was sitting on the doorstep of a building that backed onto the alley. She had her arms wrapped around her knees and a thoughtful expression on her face. Jack wished that, if this was the first time she'd seen people having sex, it had at least been _better_ sex. "Hello," he said in Welsh, since that's what they'd been using in the pub.

She answered in the same language. "Hello. No one really comes back here."

He shrugged. "That was the idea. You're out awfully late."

She shrugged back. "Mum's got a man in the flat. Sounds like they're doing something a lot like what you were just doing. Alice is asleep and the library's closed--and they don't let me check out the books I really want. So if it's the flat or out here, I'd rather be out here." She looked up at the sky. "The stars are nice."

Jack walked a little closer and looked up at the sky. "Nice, but so far away," he agreed. He looked back at her. "I'm Jack."

She smiled. "My name's Amelia Pool. Did you know that each star is a sun? And they might all have their own planets."

He grinned--he couldn't help himself. "And some of those planets have people," he said. "Some of them that look a lot like us, and some of them so different, I can't even describe them."

Her smile became a grin and an eager look. She said, "Tell me about them."

So he did. Eventually, he sat on the doorstep, beside her. It did no harm to fill her head with wonders she'd never believe or see. Maybe it would inspire her to greater wonders than this alley and the flats around it held. She asked questions, too--better questions than he sometimes got from the Torchwood Three team.

When a light went on, upstairs, Amelia grimaced. "That'll be Mum. I'd better get inside."

Jack nodded. "What kind of books won't they let you check out of the library?"

She grinned. "Anything interesting. Astronomy, electricity, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Mum doesn't care enough to sign for me to have an adult's library card."

Jack felt a tightness in his throat. Some days he was fond of this crazy, backward planet, but the ludicrous rules they bound themselves up with never broke his heart more than when they applied to kids. He forced himself to grin back. "Would astronomy keep you out of the alley when your Mum's got someone upstairs?"

Amelia nodded. "If astronomy didn't, Sherlock Holmes would."

Jack reached in his pocket and pulled out his wallet, thumbing through it by the light from the window till he found what he wanted. "Here," he said, offering it to her.

She looked at the library card. "You said your name's Jack."

He shrugged. "It is."

She looked back up at him. "The name on the card is Michael Smith."

Jack chuckled and got to his feet. "Then you'll have to learn which librarians don't care that you're checking out books on a card with a boy's name. Goodnight, Amelia."

She got to her feet. "Goodnight, Jack. Thank you."

Jack watched while she opened the door and stepped back into the building. In a week or two, he'd have forgotten the quick grope in the alley, but he knew he'd remember the conversation with Amelia for a long time.

 

 _Time and motion  
Wind and sun and rain  
Days connect like boxcars in a train  
Fill them up with precious cargo  
Squeeze in all that you can find  
Spontaneous elation  
And the long-enduring kind_

 

Jack didn't object to tents, as a rule, but after three months, he was looking forward to hot showers on a regular basis again. Starting ten minutes from now, in fact. He stepped through the cog door and called out, "Honey, I'm home!"

"Torchwood: Providing gainful employment for the freaks and misfits of Wales for over fifty years. And here's their king."

The voice was Cynthia's, and so was the attitude. A lighter, feminine voice responded to her. "What makes him king of the misfits?"

Jack headed toward the voices, finding the pair tucked away in an office. "Sorry, you have to figure that one out for yourself, kiddo," Cynthia said. She looked up at Jack. "New recruit. Jack, meet Amelia Pool."

Jack did a double-take. Dark eyes, long dark hair, and a face that almost looked familiar. Which was, he thought, not bad for having seen it years ago in a dark alley. He smiled, broadly. "Captain Jack Harkness," he said, offering his hand.

Cynthia said, "Enough of that, Jack--she's sixteen."

Amelia laughed. "I don't mind--I think he's harmless." Jack bowed over her hand. "Do you want your library card back?"

Jack couldn't help reveling in Cynthia's reaction. "Nah, I've got others. Must've done you some good, then, and I'll want to hear all about how you ended up here. But not before I've had a shower and a meal that wasn't all one color."

Cynthia leaned back in her chair. "Do what you need to, Jack. She's been waiting on combat training for two months--she can wait a little longer."

***

  
Cynthia caught up with him in the kitchen. "It's good luck we still check their test scores, you know. After the war took so many promising young men, we had to look harder for talent. Amelia had just left school. No other means of support and a little sister to take care of."

Jack drank from a cup of tolerable coffee. "Her mum passed, then. Or just left. Never met the woman, but the circumstances didn't impress me."

Cynthia eyed him. "How do you know her?"

He laughed. "Spent a night discussing aliens while she was a kid."

"After I caught him shagging a bloke in an alley," Amelia said, helpfully. Jack startled and almost spat a mouthful of coffee before she came around where he could see her. "If you're a poof, why'd Cyn just warn you off from me?"

Jack wiped a few drops of coffee off his lips with the back of his mind. She had same bright eyes and inquisitive questions, in the package of an attractive young woman, now. She must startle the hell out of the boys her age. "Keep your labels to yourself, kiddo," he told her. "I'm not as easy as astronomy."

"He's easier," Cynthia said.

"Hey!" Jack complained. Amelia giggled. He rolled his eyes. "So they want you combat trained, huh?" He frowned at Cynthia. "Please tell me she's not going into the field."

Amelia said, "I keep hoping," in the same moment Cynthia said, "Not yet, but it's better to know it and not need it than round about." Amelia frowned. Cynthia let the frown slide right past her and went on. "Amelia, right now, your job is to be brilliant for us. We want you to have your full growth before you go getting into it with aliens. If we can manage it."

If only that weren't such a big if, working for Torchwood. Jack said, "Good."

Amelia gave him a dirty look. "So I'm old enough to take care of my sister, but not old enough to do an adult's work?"

Cynthia hesitated. Cynthia at a loss for words was almost too good an opportunity to pass up, but a sixteen-year-old who didn't want to be protected was a far more urgent problem. Jack looked into Amelia's eyes, finding the quick wit he remembered there and meeting it with the memories of far too many dead boys in trenches. "We don't send fifteen-year-old boys to war anymore, either," he said.

She flinched, just a little. "But I get to learn how to shoot a gun?"

Cynthia nodded. Jack said, "I'll teach you what to do, with and without a gun. Like Cyn says--it's better to know it before you need it."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BR'd by Aibhinn.
> 
> Song lyrics throughout are the full text of "Time and Motion," by Rush.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Jack Harkness, Torchwood, Doctor Who, or the BBC. The rest of it's my fault.

It was Sunday evening. The good, god-fearing citizens of Cardiff were at home with their families, and even Torchwood Three's motley crew hadn't been called in for anything. It had been Jack and a novel all day, so when he heard a woman's weeping from the archives, he was understandably curious. He padded toward it silently, glad he hadn't bothered putting on shoes today.

Amelia was sitting between a filing cabinet and a rubbish bin, still in her Sunday best and crying into a handkerchief with her hair coming down in lank straggles around her face and ears. Uncertain whether the situation called for tea or whiskey, Jack settled to the floor with his back against the files opposite her and waited for her to notice.

When she looked up and saw him, she jumped a little and blotted at her eyes with the handkerchief. "Oh. Hi, Jack. Sorry, I thought I was far enough down not to bother you."

"I'm not bothered," he said. She raised one eloquent eyebrow. "Worried, yes. Bothered, no. I thought Sunday was family dinner?"

Amelia started to bring the handkerchief to her face again, then visibly noticed how wet it was. Jack tugged his out of his pocket and tossed it to her. "Thanks," she said, tiredly. "Yeah. It was." She twisted the handkerchief in her hands.

Jack waited. It was something he'd gotten good at over the last eighty-odd years: Amelia never stood a chance. "Ryan came to dinner," she said, finally. Her voice sounded hollow. "I haven't seen much of him, lately. I guess I should have thought about it, but you know how it gets around here." She waved her hand, vaguely. "There's always one thing and another, and the next you realize, it's been three days since you've been home."

Ryan. Amelia's fiancé, Jack thought. Amelia'd mentioned him from time to time. Jack nodded, encouraging her to go on.

"Yeah, well, _I_ haven't seen much of him, but I guess I'm the only one. Alice made an announcement. They're engaged."

Jack blinked. Alice was, what, fifteen? No, Amelia'd been working for Torchwood two or three years, now; that would make her sister . . . seventeen-ish. "Oh, sweetheart," he said, sadly.

Amelia giggled through a sob and blew her nose. "Seems he loves me, but I'd make a terrible wife. I'm never there, the flat wouldn't stay clean except Alice cleans it, and he can't see me leaving my job to stay home with the children. And Alice is so much like me, only sweeter and milder and . . . "

"Easier to control?" Jack said, quietly. Amelia sobbed. He tried to remember if kids that age were always this stupid, or if it had more to do with the decade. He thought both, and the truth was, Amelia'd always been too smart to be conventially happy. "I'm so sorry, Amelia. Would you want that? Quit the job, raise children?"

Amelia sighed. "When you put it like that . . . I don't know, Jack. Isn't that what women are supposed to do? The one thing I always wanted in life is never to end up like my mother. First, I thought that meant university. When I had to leave school, I knew my life was over. But then, Cyn came and hired me on, and everything changed." She looked at him, soberly.

Jack patted the patch of concrete beside him. Amelia scooted across the floor like she was ten again, heedless of her Sunday dress. She leaned against him and he put an arm around her. "And now?" he prompted.

"Now . . . God, Jack. I can't imagine not working here. When I was a girl, you told me about aliens like they were real, and it was fun, just for a night, to pretend to believe you'd really seen them, talked to them . . . "

"Shagged them?" he put in, helpfully.

"Well, I wasn't thinking about that, then." She sighed. "I always wanted to know what was out there, and now I do. And some of it's wonderful, and some of it's terrible, and I can't _not_ protect people from it. It's like I started by having to take care of Alice, and now, I have to take care of everybody. Keeps me so busy, I guess it's best she'll have someone else to take care of her." She sniffled again.

"Then I guess I shouldn't kill him," Jack said.

Amelia laughed helplessly through her tears. "No," she agreed. ”If I decide he should die, I'll kill him myself. It'd be embarrassing to need somebody else to kill him for me."

Jack grinned. "I love a woman who does her own dirty work," he said. "Be as angry as you want, Amelia. It's probably good for you. And if you need someone to help you dump the body, you know where to find me."

Amelia swatted his knee. She wiped a couple stray locks of hair behind her ears. "I'll be fine. I should probably apologize to them--I ran out without saying a word. It just . . . " She swallowed. "It hurts so much, Jack. Maybe I didn't want that life, but I thought we were going to have it. He just . . . assumed this was the way it was going to be, and broke it off without ever even asking me."

He squeezed her, gently. "I know it doesn't help right now, but for what it's worth--the pain will get better. It takes awhile, but eventually, it really won't hurt as much."

She twisted in his arm and gave him an unhappy look. "How would you know, Jack? You're happy to tumble whatever crosses your path, but have you ever even been _with_ someone? Someone you wanted to stay with forever? What do you know about being left?"

Jack flashed on a rough coffin going into the ground, on orange blossoms and sweet lips, and finally on a disappearing police box. For a moment, he heard the grind of the TARDIS's displacement engines and had to swallow hard. "Sweetheart," he said, quietly, "you have no idea."

The misery in her gaze lightened to something more thoughtful, and she looked at him like she'd never seen him before.

 

 _Time and motion  
Flesh and blood and fire  
Lives connect in webs of gold and razor wire_

 

"You don't have to do this, Jack."

"Well, I'm not letting you go alone, and who else do you know who looks this good in a suit?" He offered his arm to her.

Amelia took it, but didn't even smile. Oh no, there was no way he was letting her go through this alone. "It's not a big affair. Ryan's family's not large, and I'm all Alice has got. The two of 'em will go straight to the train station, after, and I'll go . . . home."

Home. To an empty flat. "Oh no you won't," he said, cheerfully. "After the wedding, we need to get you drunk."

"I'm already drunk," she said, calmly. Jack looked her over, carefully. "I started this morning. Figured it was the only way I was going to get through this."

Well, that did explain a few things. "Then, obviously, we need to get you drunker. Don't worry, I'll hold your head over the toilet, later. Friends do that for each other."

Amelia smiled, humourlessly. "If you stand up when they ask if anyone objects to the marriage, I'll die on the spot."

Jack led her to the door. "I promise, I'll be good."

She paused just inside the door and looked up at him. "You always think you're good, Jack. Loudly, and in great detail. And as entertaining as it would be, I'd rather not see it at my sister's wedding."

Jack smirked. "How 'bout this: I'll be completely socially acceptable. Even if it kills me. Deal?"

Amelia nodded. "Deal."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BR'd by Aibhinn; all mistakes are mine. Song lyrics throughout are the full text of "Time and Motion," by Rush.

"You were lovers," Amelia said, softly.

Her eyes were red and bruised-looking, but dry, now. Jack knew he didn't look much better. The surviving members of the team had done their crying when they put William into the morgue. They'd probably do more, on and off, in the days to come. But at this moment--watching William's family setting the headstone at the empty grave--he just felt hollow. One more dead friend added to the list. "Now and again," he said.

She looked off into space as the clergyman said words neither of them listened to. "I killed him," she murmured. Jack shook his head, but she ignored it. "If I'd been around that corner five seconds faster . . . "

If she'd been around that corner five seconds faster, the Phoyirn would have ripped _her_ in half instead of William--she would have made a more inviting target. Jack didn't want to imagine all that blood pooled around pieces of Amelia's slender grace. He wrapped an arm around her waist. "Don't do that to yourself, sweetheart. All you can do is what you can do. You're not superhuman. None of us are."

They watched a little girl lay flowers on the empty plot. A niece, Jack thought, or maybe a cousin. "You know," Amelia said, "I had to keep her from chasing after William's sister earlier. I didn't think she ought to see you shagging her mother in the church cellar."

"Appreciate it," Jack said, absently. Amelia's eyes swung from the grave to fasten on him. He looked at her, and she raised that eyebrow he was so familiar with. He reviewed their exchange and decided the question wasn't really William this time, or their choice of location. Which left the sister. "Sometimes, sex is a grief reaction," he told her, quietly. "It's not uncommon."

Amelia leaned against his shoulder and looked back at the grave. "Hers, or yours?" she wondered.

He stroked her hair. "I've lost more people than she has," he said. "I guarantee it."

He caught the twitch of her lips out of the corner of his eye as she managed not to smile. Her voice was rough with laughter or tears as she said, "Do me a favor. Don't shag Alice at _my_ funeral."

Jack barely choked back an entirely inappropriate laugh.

 

 _Spin a thread of precious contact  
Squeeze in all that you can find  
Spontaneous relations  
And the long-enduring kind_

 

It was funny, Jack thought, how people liked to mind their own business so intently, even in such a public place. He and Amelia walked through the park, talking quietly, and no one ever gave them a shocked look at what was said, because no one was really listening. They were probably mistaken for a courting couple. "He needed something else to think about," Jack said. "I like sucking cock. It seemed to work out."

Amelia was trying very hard not to grin. Jack chuckled at the sight. "Jack," she said, "I _know_ you don't casually molest _all_ our rookies, because you never did with me. But the percentage has got to be appallingly high."

Jack smirked and tucked his hands in his pockets. "A guy's got to have _some_ goals. Besides, you were sixteen. I was Uncle Jack."

Amelia laughed. "Yes, you were--the disreputable uncle no one wants to admit is really a relative. And you revel in it." Jack grinned. Amelia's laughter faded. "I'm not sixteen anymore," she said, mildly.

He let his eyes run approvingly over her figure. She'd gotten to be just enough through breast and hip, and the long legs hidden under her very modest skirt would be worth hours of worship all on their own. When he brought his eyes back to her face, she was faintly flushed. He smiled. "I'd noticed," he agreed. He looked away again, watching a toddler chase after a ball. "But I know myself too well. There wouldn't be anything casual about 'molesting' you, Amelia. And I wouldn't stop being Disreputable Jack just because I don't feel casual about you." He shrugged.

It almost surprised him when she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. He adjusted the line of his arm automatically and looked down at her. Her expression was pleased and thoughtful, and he had to work hard _not_ to think about every time he'd managed not to kiss those upturned lips. "I've known what you were since that night I met you, Jack. I wouldn't want you to be someone else. That is, if you _want_ not-casual."

There was a little hesitation around her eyes, and it just killed him that he couldn't kiss it away in public, not in 1958. He smiled at her, instead. "Then you probably don't want me on my knees down in the Archives," he said, wryly. She giggled. "And my bed's a little narrow."

She considered that and smiled, faintly. "Mine's not."

***

  
"I think--I'd rather be on top."

Jack drew back far enough to look into Amelia's eyes. She squirmed against him, moist heat against the underside of his cock, making him bite his lip as she levered herself up onto her elbows. He looked down her body, along the long column of her throat and over small, perfect breasts, across the warm expanse of her stomach, to the place where they were almost--but not yet--joined. Dragging his gaze back to her face with its luminous dark eyes took even longer. "I'd rather _have_ you on top," he agreed. "But sometimes, the first time's smoother if you let somebody else drive."

They stared at each other until Amelia snickered. "Jack, what exactly about my life is _smooth_?"

He laughed a little and shifted around so he could sit, lacing his fingers at the small of her back and drawing her up with him. "Right, then," he said, as she sidled forward to sit in his lap.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BR'd by Aibhinn; all mistakes are mine. Song lyrics throughout are the full text of "Time and Motion," by Rush.

"Simon, the signal originates about thirty meters in from the south wall," Amelia said through the alien comms.

"I'm on it," Simon's answer came through the earpiece Jack wore. Jack continued searching his own section of the warehouse, looking for anything or anyone out of place. Simon was silent for what was, for him, an ominously long time. When he finally spoke, Jack wasn't reassured. "Well, I've found it. I'm fairly sure it's not alive, but I'm not very sure what it _is_ , except it's moving. I could use some help from our idea man if you're clear, Jack."

"On my way," Jack said. "Keep a safe distance. Call it fifteen meters, if you can do it and still keep line of sight."

"No argument," Simon said. Oh yes, he was _far_ too compliant for Jack's peace of mind.

Jack began wending his way through stacks of crates. Amelia said, " _Angels-fear-to-tread_ -Simon is willingly backing off? I have to see this thing."

Simon yelped, "Amelia! It might not be safe!"

Jack said, "Fifteen meters, Amelia." He took a turn that aimed him toward the south wall.

Simon's outrage was clear over the comms. "Jack, talk some sense into her. She's _your_ woman."

Jack shook his head, even though Simon couldn't see it. New decade, same stupidity. "Amelia's nobody's woman, Simon, and if you want her to steer you _out_ of the alien land mines next time, instead of into them, you should probably keep that in mind." He rounded the end of an aisle and saw the kid standing with his weapon out, though not aimed.

Amelia said, "Though if you like, Jack, you could be my kept man." Her voice was distracted, and she appeared between two rows of crates as Jack watched, weapon drawn and off to one side of his and Simon's location. "I'm sure you'd be pretty in an apron and nothing else."

Jack advanced past Simon's position, looking past his Webley at the source of the signal. "Does the position come with benefits?" he asked. Simon was right--the thing _looked_ mechanical, but it was moving, and damned if those didn't look like legs. Jack tuned out Simon's choking in his ear. There was nothing robotic about the thing--creature--as it turned in a threatened circle. "I don't know the species," he said, "but this guy's bio-mechanical."

"That means we can't shoot it?" Amelia asked.

Jack holstered the Webley. "Shoot all you want--you won't hurt it much. Besides, it hasn't done anything to harm anyone, just scared hell out of some dock workers. Let's see what we can find to trap it. Amelia, can you rig something to--" The creature oriented on him, a small light blinking rapidly in a way that raised Jack's hackles. "Everybody down!" he shouted.

***

  
Bright, he thought--if he could think anything as he gasped for air. It wasn't so much a thought as a lingering sensory impression mixed in with the screaming burn of revivification. "Amelia! Simon!" he gasped into the comms.

"Jack!" Amelia shouted, much closer than he'd like. "You're alive! Simon, get that thing in the jar!"

Jack closed his eyes against the pain of a rapidly-mending skull. He did a quick internal survey and decided that his bones were healing and his organs already had, but he was well and truly stuck. When he opened his eyes again, all he could see was fragments of wooden crate: presumably what he was stuck _under_. "Didn't think you could get rid of me that easy, did you? Now what've you got over there?"

"I'm calling them spores," Amelia replied. "They're self-motivated fragments left after the creature blew itself up at you. We've got most of them contained." There was a pause. "God, Jack, I thought you were dead." Her voice was ragged.

He lifted his head a couple centimeters and groaned a little as it throbbed. _If only._ "Nah, couple of crates fell on me. They must've shielded me from the worst of it. I'm not going anywhere till you two can lend a hand lifting, but I think I'm okay."

Amelia managed a laugh that didn't sound too much like a sob. "Good, 'cos I still need to know if you cook."

Jack managed to wrench his left arm free. He touched the back of his head and found blood and thicker things in his hair. "Not nearly as well as I--"

"Jack!" Amelia and Simon stopped him in unison. He combed his fingers through his hair, trying to work some of the mess out, and hoped they'd be too relieved to look closely. Blood on the floor, he could explain. Grey matter and skull fragments . . . Well, he'd deal with it if it came up.

 

 _The mighty ocean  
Dances with the moon  
The silent forest  
Echoes with the loon_

 

Amelia was furious. It showed in the set of her lips, the little crease between her eyebrows, and every line of her body. Rather than let him in, she stepped out of her flat and into the hallway, hanging around his neck and kissing him savagely. Jack let his lips part under the assault and settled his palms into the hollow of her back, stroking it until he felt the tension there begin to ease, just a little.

They broke apart and he looked into her eyes, misliking what he saw there. He let her draw him inside and closed the door behind them. "I don't know," he said, "whether to pour you a drink or take you straight to bed. I thought we were being discreet for your neighbors?"

She kissed him again, lightly, and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "The drink, first, if you feel like pouring." He stroked the nape of her neck and kissed her hair. After a moment, she drew away and crossed to sit on the sofa. Jack hung his coat on the rack and walked into her kitchen, finding the whiskey she kept in a bottom cupboard. "My neighbors are nosy," Amelia said, thinly. "I thought we'd save them time."

Jack almost felt bad for the neighbors. Amelia on the warpath was a force of nature. "So what happened?" He acquired a pair of glasses and poured two fingers of whiskey into each.

She leaned her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes. "Alice came by while I was out, yesterday. I found this out second-hand; she probably meant to remind me about Kathleen's birthday. As if I'd forget." She sighed. "Apparently, Mrs. Miller took the opportunity to express some concerns about the handsome American she'd seen going in and out of my flat." Jack walked over and pressed the drink into her hand. "Thanks," she murmured, taking a sip while he sat beside her. "Now Alice wants to know if I have a beau, and will I be bringing him to Sunday dinner?"

Jack started to smirk, but stopped at the look on her face. He snaked an arm around her shoulders. "What's the rest, then?" he asked.

She took another sip and shifted so she could lean back against him. "Apparently, Alice wondered to Ryan if this was the American who'd accompanied me to their wedding, which made Ryan wonder just how long we'd been sneaking around. Well, Alice didn't put it like that, but I know my brother-in-law well enough to know what he would have said.

"So . . . it's been suggested to me that if I do _not_ turn up at Sunday dinner with a serious beau, I should stop attending Sunday dinner. Alice says Ryan says our behavior is immoral and they don't want it around their children. I might be a bad influence." Her hand tightened around her glass.

Jack held his own, still untouched. "And?" he prompted.

Amelia laughed, bitterly. "And you know what? They have a point. Oh, not about us." She must have felt the tension in his body. She patted his face with one gentle hand. "But I'm a bad influence. I'm bloody Torchwood, Jack. We both are. Those kids can't see me as a role model--it's not safe. Sooner or later, I might put them in danger just by being around them, even if I pretended to be the dull maiden aunt Ryan wishes I were."

Family . . . meant everything to Amelia. She'd had so little of her own worth the name. "Sweetheart--"

"No," she cut him off, gesturing with her glass. "I like my life, Jack. It makes me happy. But I won't risk my nieces and nephew. Torchwood eats its own young."

 _And you're one of them,_ Jack thought, his throat tight. He brushed her hair back from her forehead. "No one can hurt you like family," he said, softly.

She tossed back the rest of her drink. "You'd think I wouldn't have to keep learning that lesson," she murmured. She squirmed around on the sofa and tilted her face up for a kiss. "We've had the drink," she said, softly. "Take me to bed?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bitty little spoiler for Something Borrowed. BR'd by aibhinn; all mistakes are mine. Song lyrics throughout are the full text of "Time and Motion," by Rush.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Jack Harkness, Torchwood, Doctor Who, or the BBC. The rest of it's my fault.

_Time and motion  
Live and love and dream  
Eyes connect like interstellar beams_

 

"Who needs electricity?" Jack murmured into her neck. "You're even more beautiful by lamplight."

Amelia laughed, softly, and propped herself up on one elbow. "That's because you can't see the crow's feet," she said. He tried to pull her back down onto her bed, but she evaded him and bent to kiss the corners of his eyes. "Not that you'd know anything about that. Never a new wrinkle or grey hair."

Not a conversation Jack felt like having when they were warm and safe in the middle of a storm and basking in afterglow. "Not that Simon isn't trying to turn us _all_ grey," Jack said. He pulled her down for a long, sweet kiss, trying to drive age and death out into the night and the blackout and the rain.

She let him claim the kiss, but looked into his eyes, afterward. He sighed. "Fifteen years, Jack. More than that--I was ten when you gave me that library card." He opened his mouth to brush her words aside, but she pressed her fingers to his lips. "No, you don't have to tell me. But . . . if it were some trick you could teach, or some alien technology you could share, you would, right?"

Jack's throat felt tight. _Oh, sweetheart--you always were too smart to be happy._ He reached up and drew his knuckles down her cheek and along her jaw. "I wouldn't wish this on you for the world," he murmured.

"Oh," she said, frowning a little. She had just started to pull away when the frown disappeared. "Oh," she breathed, understanding spilling across her lamp-lit features. She brushed the pad of her thumb under his eye, tenderly. He captured her hand and kissed the knuckles, waiting for the inevitable question. Amelia lay beside him and cuddled close. He kissed her throat and her shoulder. "Do I ever seem like a little girl to you?" she asked, quietly.

It was the same question, he guessed, but it didn't come the way he'd expected it. He could have smiled: Nothing about Amelia came the way you expected it. "Not the right moment to ask that," he whispered, licking a long line from her collarbone down around her breast. She made a small noise of pleasure. "You have always been Amelia to me," Jack said. "And Amelia is . . . fantastic." His lips curved in a smile that was more fond than bitter. "Precious, and fragile, and beautiful."

She caught the back of his neck with one hand and held it until he met her eyes. "Who're you calling fragile?" she asked, smiling.

***

Paul had been glued to Jack's elbow for five days. Jack wasn't sure if that was Paul's idea or Evelyn's. The director of Torchwood Three should know better than to put a man who couldn't die on suicide watch. It was almost as ridiculous as the notion of trying to kill himself when he'd just revivify in even more pain. All the same, no amount of "I'll be fine" from Jack reassured Evelyn or got rid of Paul. Maybe it was really Paul who needed this, for his own peace of mind: The rookie with the bad Beatles haircut had held his mentor while she died, and it had more than shaken him. Going to give her lover the news while he was still covered in her blood had almost broken the kid.

They watched a pair of little girls put a wreath of flowers on the coffin. It wasn't Amelia's body, of course, but it gave Alice something to mourn over. "Her nieces," Jack told Paul. He nodded at the little boy standing to one side with his parents. "And nephew. She hadn't spoken to them in a few years, but she'd go watch them play outside when their parents weren't around, sometimes."

Paul shook his head, blankly. "I didn't even know she had family."

Jack gestured with his free hand. "Brother-in-law and sister," he said, pointing them out. Ryan happened to meet Jack's eyes over the heads of the other mourners, and looked away. "Not real good at accepting what they didn't understand. They never saw how--" his voice broke, "how amazing she really was."

Paul shuddered. They watched as four men lowered the coffin into the waiting grave.

"Did it help, Jack?" Paul asked, eventually. Jack looked a question at him. Paul said, "What she said. She was . . . " He swallowed. "She was trying so hard to say those words, at the end, only they didn't make any sense. I'd thought maybe she was raving, except . . . it meant something to you, didn't it? So . . . did it help?"

 _"Tell Jack it's in my purse."_ Jack blinked back tears. "Yeah," he said, forcing a small, sad smile. "It helped." He looked down at the rose he held.

Eventually, the family walked away. "Stay here," Jack told Paul. He walked over to the graveside. Which was stupid: Amelia's body was back in the morgue; the library card, bent and worn where it had been in her purse most of twenty years, was in a box with his photos. _Humans need this,_ he thought. _A place to remember, even if there's no meaning to the place itself._ He cradled the delicate bloom in the palm of his hand. _We need to remember these things that are precious and fragile. And beautiful._

He kissed the petals and laid it on top of the stone.

 

 _Superman in Supernature  
Needs all the comfort he can find  
Spontaneous emotion  
And the long enduring kind_

 

 _**fin** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Originally posted June 2009, well before Amelia Pond showed up on Doctor Who. Similarity of the names is Not My Fault._


End file.
